Beneath the Wings of Geronimo's Spirit: Haskay Bay Nay Ntay

By R. James Roybal

San Augustino said quietly. Be careful with that blade Robert. You might cut yourself!
San Augustino was rewarded with Robert shouting a fearful battle cry and charging with his saber held high in an anticipated downward thrust!
Gasps of horror could be heard at the display of the ungentlemanly like conduct!
Robert on the other hand, was beginning to become disheartened with what he thought was going to be an easy victory with his surprise attack. He was mentally out of balance because his saber had only cut air and hit the ground! Worse was the sudden realization that he had complexly missed San Augustino and was now lying with his face in the mud!
Robert immediately jumped up screaming in frustrated anger aided by the feeling of the pain of an imaginary saber blade in his back! Robert knew in his heart that he would have taken advantage of the situation, if the tables had been turned and Augustino had been the one sliding on his face.
Robert neednt have feared, because San Augustino was still standing perfectly poised about ten feet away almost in the same position that he had been standing when Robert had originally charged!
It was almost as if San Augustino had not moved!
Robert suddenly felt a stinging sensation on his chest and looking down was horrified to see a thin red streak that was starting to spread his across his white shirt!
It was the thinnest of cuts and although not very wide looked painfully deep and more importantly, was rapidly bleeding his strength away!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483687568

R. James Roybal

R. James Roybal Born near La Vita Pass in Southern Colorado Attended University of Colorado – Major Civil Engineering Started working for U.S. Geological as an intern in 1962 in Southern Colorado Stationed in Saigon Vietnam 1964 – 1965 attached to the Department of the Navy working with the 5th. Marines as a cartographer Returned to the US in Oct. 1965 continued working summers for USGS Received an offer from Western Airlines in San Francisco to work in Ground Operations Started a company building muscle Cars and Racing boats, Bought into a Construction company move to Montana to start a log home business Built a large Bar and Restaurant – Moved to Southern California went back to College received a degree in Computer Science and Technology. Attended San Bernardino Sheriff Academy Worked in law enforcement specializing in Computer Fraud and industrial espionage Involved in Mortgage Fraud investigation and forensic appraising for the last 14 years

Book preview

BENEATH THE WINGS

OF GERONIMO’S SPIRIT

HASKAY BAY NAY NTAY

R. James Roybal

Copyright © 2013 by R. James Roybal.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914969

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4836-8755-1

Softcover 978-1-4836-8754-4

Ebook 978-1-4836-8756-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 09/11/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Chapter I

Summer 1863

Chapter II

The Raid

Chapter III

Texas Ranger Larkin

Chapter IV

The Second Day

Chapter V

Quanah Parker

Chapter VI

Grandmothers Magic Light

Chapter VII

Chaco Canyon

Chapter VIII

The Ghosts of Red Mesa

Chapter IX

Julio Caesar

Chapter X

A New Beginning

Chapter XI

White Rock Ranch

Chapter XII

The Black and the White

Chapter XIII

The Legend begins

Chapter XIV

El Colegio de San Miguel

Chapter XV

St Michael’s Graduation Class of 1876

Chapter XVI

William Bonnie

Chapter XVII

James Fry

Chapter XVIII

Lessons learned

Chapter XIX

Mr. & Mrs. Ely Snow

Chapter XX

Patrick O’Callaghan

Chapter XXI

Into the Mountains

Chapter XXII

The beginning of a legend

Chapter XXIII

Running Deer

Chapter XXIV

The Gates of Valhalla

Chapter XXV

Ceran St. Vrain

Chapter XXVI

A Walk through the Valley of Death

Chapter XVII

The Legend Continues!

From the Author

References—and Acknowledgements

Haskay-bay-nay-ntay

The legend of the Apache Kid

&

The Mysteries Surrounding His life

This book is dedicated to my brother Gerard L. Roybal for whom I have

great respect and admiration.

R. James Roybal

June 2013

Riverside, CA

Rebel’s Lament

So many times I end the day at night

A league away from where I thought I’d be.

Where battle’s undertaken, no one’s right.

No honor in such loss of life for me.

But with the sun today came hope abound,

In the valley down below, I could see

A cotton patch, with blossoms, white and round,

As though a snow had fallen silently.

And I remembered you for what you are,

Warm breath of life amidst a world of cold

Who spreads blessings more plentiful than stars

And with whom I do aspire to grow old.

If I could watch your cotton patch mature

My life would be fulfilled, of this I’m sure.

In a letter written to a distant love, December 11, 1862 ─

The eve of the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia

Found fluttering in the wind December 16, 1862

Chapter I

Summer 1863

This was not Virginia!

This definitely was not the beautiful emerald green rolling hills overflowing with pure white puffs of cotton flowers that were a distinction that were only known of the South!

This day! This one day of December 11, 1862, would go down in history books as the battle of Fredericksburg!

This morning, the first day of the battle, the weather had been cold and overcast with a dense fog blanketing the ground and making it impossible to see the white blossoms covering the emerald green hillside. It also made it impossible for the two warring armies that were facing each other!

The soldier had been eagerly awaiting the morning sun to burn off the fog and reveal the beauty of the hills and dales that according to all references would be covered with white blossoms of cotton. The newspapers reported. Blossoms so thick that the ground looked as if it was covered in snow!

He had fervently been praying to God! Actually He would accept aid from any deity that would listen and most importantly would somehow stop either army from ever showing up! Unbeknownst to him, at this moment, the battle lines had already been drawn up and everything was in place for the battle of Fredericksburg to begin.

It was a well-established rumor that the Union infantry had required on average 900 pounds of lead and 240 pounds of black powder to kill a single Confederate soldier! To put an end to the possibility of this rumor having any merit, an officer by the name of Colonel Hiram Berdan under the command of Gen. Winfield Scott had been ordered to change this outrageous waste of material and money and to create and deliver two entirely new sharpshooter regiments. These men were to be drawn from the best of the best rifle shots from the various states of the Union.

So began his nightmare!

He had been stationed at Fort Union which was located in a remote corner of the New Mexico territory, when the word came down that he was to try out for a new type of fighting.

This type of warfare was not unfamiliar to him as his grandfather had killed a man at 1000 yards with a sharps 57 Caliber rifle using iron sights and he himself had shot moving renegades out of the saddle at 1000 yards or better also only using iron sights. Although Telescopic sights were more accurate they were also much more fragile and not designed to be used in battleground conditions.

The soldier’s reputation with the proficiency of a long range rifle had proceeded him. He had been recruited, one from among several thousand competitors who had tried out for the two hundred odd positions that were being offered. Out of the many he was one of the very few that had been chosen. The many had tried out because it meant less restrictions in battle. Shooting at a distance gave the sharpshooter the advantage of not being easily detected and subject to return fire. And then there was more and better food, more money and much better fighting conditions. Most of the Long distance shooters for the most part did not have to wear a particular uniform. Most of the men in his company of long range shooters tried to distinguish themselves from their peers by camouflaging their uniforms so that they could more easily blend into their surroundings. He mostly had been chosen because he could consistently put five one once rounds of molten lead into in a dinner size plate target at 500 yards in less than a minute. Actually he could consistently put out a target the size of a man’s eye using his own modified 52-caliber 475-grain Sharps buffalo rifle at 1000 yards!

So Far, in this war his efforts had been very successful. He had participated in seven battles to date, starting in April with the battle of Shiloh. It was now November and so far he had chalked up the demise of three Confederate Officers, at ranges of 600, 900 and the last at 1400 yards respectfully. The kill shot at 1400 yards although a surprise to him, was even a bigger surprise to the Confederate officer! The officer had been sitting astride his horse on the top of a hill with his chest bared daring any one of the enemy combatants to shoot him. So he did! His overall score of regular soldiers was much higher but he chose not to think about it or keep score.

This morning while he was impatiently standing up looking over the side of the bulwark trying to see through the fog when his head exploded with pain and he was violently thrown backward!

He had been brought down by a Confederate Sniper bullet fired by a Confederate sniper from 1200 yards away! The Confederate bullet with his name on it had gashed the side of his head knocking him senseless and left him lying on the ground like a bloody rag doll with a gaping and blood gushing head wound.

As if a signal, the battle started a few seconds later. The ensuing battle diverted the full attention of everyone around him and refocused their attention towards the attacking enemy. No one had time to bother to check on the wounded soldier. Within a few minutes there were several hundred more thrashing and bleeding wounded men and everyone had assumed that he was dead and had quickly forgotten him. Not one person from among his comrades took the time or had the time to make sure!

The battle of Fredericksburg that had started with a single rifle shot was followed by an artillery barrages firing from both sides! This was followed up with attacks and counter attacks by the rank and file of both armies. The battle ended four days later with the clearing of black powder smoke and whimpering of dying and wounded men.

He had missed the entire battle because he had been unconscious and spent the last five days lying in an open grave. When he finally became conscious instinct had guided him and he began pushing his way through the bodies that had been stacked on top of him. It was a struggle and he imagined that it was like being born again with the pain, the blood and the guts. When He finally pushed up through the last of the dead bodies he nearly gave the Soldiers that were gathered around the pit shoveling dirt over the bodies, heart attacks!

He was later transported by an ambulance wagon that had been sent to gather up much needed equipment and clothing, mostly guns and boots, from the dead. The gathered equipment was not marked with either the U.S. or C.S.A. insignias so it was taken back to headquarters and given to the new recruits who would not know where the donation came from but would be grateful for the slightly used and almost new equipment.

The one regret that haunted his dreams was that he never got to see the hills mantled in white blossoms!

Due to the severity of the head wound he suffered from severe headaches and blackouts. This stayed with him for a long time afterward, however the most annoying problem was that his eyes would not work together and would not focus properly. It was as if each of his eyes wanted to be independent of the other. Because of this he was forced to walk with a cane and a bandage wrapped around one eye his head. Catching a glimpse of himself in a mirror he thought that he decided that he looked like a mummy. Even his skin was gray and paper like.

He was given a medal! He was also given orders to report back to his unit at Fort Union!

No one cares how many storms a ship has to weather before it makes its port destination. The ship’s owners only want to see that the cargo was landed safely. Just as true is that no one cares how much one soldier bleeds or suffers. A general’s only immediate concern is whether if the soldier’s blood and guts won the battle!

His getting wounded had scuttled any cargo that he may have had and now he found himself less than a past memory of his fellow warriors and on loaded in the box car of a troop train heading away from the bloody green battle fields and back to the burnt Plains of the Great American Desert. The travel was slow and grueling with many stops along the way but the healing time was even slower!

After a few months of attended rest given by his mother. His eyesight slowly returned and now here he was! In this time and place! The one thought that kept running and re-running like a bad dream in his fevered mind was, I wonder which of my most foul and evil deeds had I done, to justify being thrown into this particular pit of hell as my penance?

No one single incident stood out above the rest!

There were just too many evil deeds to choose from! He could not even begin to count and pick the one event in his life that stood out and that may have been the reason for his being here and now! But worst of all the punishments was that although his eyes were seeing, his mind could not grasp the situation!

He only knew that he was looking straight into the lowest pit of Dante’s hell!

It was so hot that it felt as if his eyes were on fire!

He somehow knew that his eyes would never see the emerald green hills and dales that he had come to love and know. His mind finally began to clear and to accept the fact that he was no longer in Tennessee but was in fact at this moment looking at a hot desolate desert mesa!

He was at this particular point in time surrounded by miles and miles of hot molten sand! From his high vantage point, the sand almost looked as if the ground was alive and slowly crawling. He knew from past experience that the motion effect was caused by the rising heat waves and was similar to the ebbing of non-descript waves on a calm ocean. Almost as if awaking from a dream he found himself lying in a prone position on one of the many overheated rocky outcroppings. This rocky outcropping was hot enough to fry eggs! Any eggs! Including his eggs!

Sneaking a look over the edge of the ledge he was shocked to find himself staring straight down into what appeared to be the broiling pits of hell! His body was drenched in perspiration that was trying to put out a fire that was burning him up clear to his soul!

His rifle barrel was so hot he had wrapped a piece of buckskin around the heavy octagon metal barrel. This hide was not only to avert the sun’s reflection but also to keep his hands from being burned to a crisp. The sun rays had superheated the heavy iron metal barrel of the rifle. If he had grasped the heated barrel or accidently brushed against it his flesh would be burnt as if he had touched a red hot iron. The sun had risen hours earlier with a vengeance and now burned down on everything below. The man had up to now been able to ignore the heat, and for the past two hours he had stared intently at the two human figures far below him. The subjects of his attention seemed to be squatting in the middle of an assemblage of burning rocks!

Only a placid curiosity was aroused in him to try and guess what they were doing! His only thought was to try to gage accurately the distance and elevation where the two figures were located. That they were far below him but also across a chiasm that was still cold and dark with shadows did not concern him. He was more interested in setting up his sights on the target!

What a land! Ice that begets fire! That’s what this hellish land was, a Faust marriage of fire and ice!

Beads of perspiration invaded his eyes, maliciously burning them with his own salty sweat. Rather than risk the possibility of any movement being spotted by the two people he was watching, he slowly blinked his eyes and patently waited for the salt to clear and for his eyes to stop burning. His back was to the open sky and he could feel the intense heat of the sun burn through his buckskin jerkin. He did not rub his eyes but instead he only blinked to clear them because he knew that any movement out of the ordinary would easily be seen! He also did not look directly at the two subjects but instead looked away and watched them with his peripheral vision. This was a trick he used when hunting his prey because he knew that all creatures had built in protection that would alert them to anyone or anything watching. The white men as a rule lost this by living in congested cities.

The air was thick with the heat and nothing was moving! In order to try and keep his mind active, he tried to relive the situation in his mind from the beginning! Slowly, with much pain. More mental anguish and remorse, than with actual physical pain, he began to remember!

It had been the summer of 1863, the summer of death that had ushered in one of the bloodiest eras in the history of the United States of America!

While the majority of the world was busily killing itself off, with its Ism’s, the United States had only joined in the mayhem two years ago. The populist mad with hate had with its own personal efforts, feverishly tried to devour itself with irrational hatred. The insanity had begun ingenuously enough with a bluffed attack on Fort Sumter by the newly formed Confederation of Southern States. They had tried bluffing with the intention of frightening the Union out of a war and more importantly out of its fortified position of Fort Sumter. The newly elected president of the newly formed confederacy had ascertained that bluffing was much more gentlemanly than any actual confrontation. However the Union commander of Fort Sumter was not a gentleman! The Union General could give a whit about Southern manners! His orders were to hold the fort at all costs, and that by God that was his intent!

The Battle of Fort Sumter (April 12-13, 1861) was the bombardment and the ultimate surrender of Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina. This accident of miscalculation had unintentionally lit the fuse to the tinderbox and had started a killing spree that was later named in history books as the American Civil War. Following declarations of secession by seven Southern states, South Carolina demanded that the U.S. Army abandon its facilities in Charleston Harbor. On December 26, 1860, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surreptitiously moved his small command from the indefensible Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island to Fort Sumter, a substantial fortress controlling the entrance of Charleston Harbor. An attempt by U.S. President James Buchanan to reinforce and resupply Anderson, using the unarmed merchant ship Star of the West, failed. When the Fort was fired upon by shore batteries on January 9, 1861, South Carolina authorities then seized all Federal property in the Charleston area, except for Fort Sumter. The fort remained at odds with its Southern neighbors. The newspapers in order to increase circulation and readership did a marvelous job of whipping every one into a rage and suddenly everyone was involved in the fray with opinions based on biased news reporting and hearsay! The northern and southern states had squared off against each other two years ago like two tough kids on the block each trying to intimidate the other to prove to the world and more importantly to themselves which of the two was the toughest. Their positions were picked up by the press and they were encouraged and egged on by every newspaper in the nation.

The Eastern seaboard was the first then the Southern States, and now even the Western States of what was once the once mighty Country joined in unity, was now relentlessly engaged in raging battle after bloody battle pitting brother against brother, father against son. In its Armageddon wake were unimaginable numbers of unidentifiable bodies, of rotting husbands, brothers and sons. Each side was willing to die or kill for whatever zealous cause they might have. Each side was willing to sacrifice themselves or if need be, their own relatives or in some cases their own sons or fathers. All in the idealistic name of State’s Rights. It is however, very probable that only a very few among all of those rotting mounds of rotting corps could articulate the meaning of the term States Rights.

Battles such as Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg and Gettysburg were just a few of the killing sprees that had created a shortage of available fighting men to continue the senseless carnage that was being demanded by the overzealous generals of war!

The coincidental series of events presented an opportunity for the very newly elected and mostly unpopular president of the Union, Abraham Lincoln, to change tactics! Everything and everyone appeared to be under the influence of madness! Reason, had been cast to the winds! Nothing made sense, as everyone was angry, hostile and unreasonable. It was as if the gods of war had cursed mankind. President Lincoln now proclaimed this to be a glorious war not only for the notion of Federalism but now for the more important idea of a Holy War that would free the por’ black folk that were now living under the yoke of slavery. These "por black folk" that had been ripped away from their homelands were now slaving away in the south. It made no never mind that they had been originally enslaved by people of their own color. Slavery was not about the color of one’s skin, it was about status of one’s life. The concept was simple if you were poor, ignorant and weak you became a slave! As there were black slaves, there were also yellow slaves and brown slaves and even white slaves. The Irish knew this better than anyone! Anyone that toiled in the factories or served on a merchant or whaling ships knew the meaning of slavery. Anyone that walked the furrows behind a mule, knew this.

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed and forever coined the term, "Emancipation Proclamation!"

This term began, was soon picked up by the press and was then used as it is now, as a relying cry!

The proclamation however was just a word trap designed to tear at the emotions of the people on both sides of the issue. Then, as it is now, the favorite ploy of politicians is to boil the emotions of the populace. This is called "Mob Rule by ignorance!"

The Proclamation was designed to only free the slaves in the Southern states. And as planned, the Proclamation only affected the Democratic Southern States and had no bearing on the rest of the Continental United States.

Again, the common combatant with very limited or in most cases, no education at all, was doomed to failure! The common foot soldier or newly freed slave, as a rule, was unable to read or write and hadn’t the faintest idea what the term Emancipation meant! In fact the common soldier that lay dying in the bottom of a muddy ditch wearing either a blue or a gray uniform did not have the faintest idea, effect or care what this new proclamation would have on him or his family. Even of greater interest was the fact that very few of the combatants on either side were slave owners!

However, the common combatant had now been blessed with a new cause with which to align himself. Granting to him and his brothers, an almost Holy absolution and an almost irrational reason to fight. More importantly they now had the Holy Right to kill, without impudence, more fellow Americans, in more significant numbers.

As predicted, the Southern States seeing the possibilities of a new army of soldiers, opposing the Army of the South that was comprised of men of African descent inflicted great deal of alarm. The Southern patriots fell into President Lincoln’s trap by having the congress of the southern states pass a resolution that would allow the confederate troops the right to detain, (maim or castrate) and or kill any and all black men that might be perceived to be soldiers. This incidentally, was almost every male black slave! This resolution left the interpretation up to the discretion of the confederate soldiers whose finality of decision was to determine if a black man was a soldier or a civilian. This resolution also created a howl in the northern newspapers and rekindled the flames of hate into wild raging fires. No one stopped to reason that the probability of killing a black male slave was as strange a concept to a southern slave owner as killing his prize bull, just because it had horns and could kill. What would be the sense?

Additionally, the congress under the leadership of the new president and with continued influential lobbying from the Rothschild banking coalition pushed through several innovative banking laws that effectively changed the way banking was being conducted and would have major effects on the way that business would be conducted throughout the world in the future. The first of many was the issuing of Gold Certificates! These new Gold Certificates were backed by the newly formed banking consortium which was made up of many of the major banks in both the U.S and abroad. With this new consortium in place, the transfer of gold by use of paper instead of actual physical movement of the bullion now became the norm. The new banking laws idea was sold to the low informed public as a way to create a much safer and more efficient way to transfer capital between banks and private investors who would no longer have to worry about gold shipments being hijacked. However, in actuality, the new laws allowed the banks to physically accumulate and retain all of the gold coins and bullion in their vaults. More importantly this also allowed the U.S. Government access to unlimited wealth by borrowing against perceived wealth or in the event of a national emergency, the quick use of funding! No one seemed to notice that it also allowed the bankers on Wall Street, much easier access to funds from which they now could generate massive amounts of instant personal wealth! Thus began the "Federal Reserve Bank, which incidentally is not part of the U.S. Government but is in fact a privately run enterprise. Like all idealistic motivations that are sold to the common uninformed mass, what is perceived on the surface as a good idea to help the common people, is suddenly turned into a more creative way for the elitist to steal more pennies, nickels and dimes, from the poor folk both black and white".

Meanwhile far to the south in Mexico, the newly formed rag tag Mexican army, was attacking and hacking apart the invading French foreign legionnaires. The French legionnaires were under the command of Maximillian I who was Napoleon Bonaparte’s son. The French legionnaires had been put in charge of keeping the peace between the Mexican rebellion and the Indians. French troops had been manning a fort in Hacienda Cameron, Mexico and the French regular army Generals had ordered the French garrison to abandon the fort and flee the country. This ill planned maneuver was not welcomed by the Commander of the French Foreign Legionnaires who wanted to stay and fight in order to maintain control of the territory until a more defendable retreat could be conducted. A temporary continued occupation of the fort would have enabled the Legionnaires to maintain control of the region and would have allowed the safe withdrawal of the regular soldiers. The non-seasoned French commander of the regular army was serving in Mexico, which coincidently happened to be the only safe opportunity for glory and the gaining of rank. He overruled the Legionnaire’s commander and ordered the immediate withdrawal of the garrison troops. With deep reservation the French Legionnaire Commander ordered his officer to move his troops toward the ocean. Shortly thereafter the newly formed Mexican army was hot on their heels like a pack of hungry wolves picking off the weakened stragglers. The retreating legionnaires were harried and picked off by the Mexicans, one by one until there were only two Legionnaires remaining. The two men were allowed to live long enough to get within sight of the waiting French ships before they were slowly cut to pieces, a small piece at a time. It took a long time for them to die.

When the news arrived in port of Matamoras Mexico about the massacre, the French generals tipped their wine glasses toward the direction of the massacred solders and set sail for France, leaving behind a wave of violence that would continue for the next three hundred years.

In the intern, the army of Texas under the command of Sam Huston, who had been aware of the Legionnaires massacre split his forces and ordered part of the Texas troops to move to the Mexican border to occupy a series of Cannon batteries that had been built on the Rio Grande River (The Grand River).

At this time, the Rio Grande was as magnificent river nearly as mighty as the Mississippi River and in some places was about 400 yards across. River boats (Floating gambling casinos) traveled up and down this mighty river starting at Brownsville, Texas in the South carrying a myriad of both passengers and freight. The poker games sometimes lasted all the way to Espanola which is the main landing for Santa Fe New Mexico and points as far north as Denver. The travel between Brownsville and Santa Fe was best during the spring run offs. The Rio Grande River was also the dividing line between the Republic of Texas and the turbulent Country of Mexico. Troop occupation on the American side of the River was ordered by the U.S. Army in order to protect its citizens from the possibility of an attack by an invading Mexican army. Due to a shortage of experienced Indian fighters but not necessarily good competent officers. The Union Army also redeployed the main portion of its western Indian fighting troops to the battlefields in the East. This left a large unattended area that was no longer protected by either side.

Due to the lack of any military presence, several hundred bands of American Indians from the Dakota tribes in the Northern part of the U.S. to the Apache and Navajo nations in the southwest decided that this was the prophesized time to fill the vacuum and start the drive to push the white men off of their hunting grounds. Indian raids on the white and Mexican settlement began in earnest, but the both the white men and the Mexicans fought back with greater ferocity than the Indians had been led to believe possible. The Mexicans were especially ruthless as they were not only given free rein to kill Indians but in addition the bounty hunters from both sides of the border were able to collect a reward for scalps. The obliteration of a whole race of people was done in the name of reprisals for the massacres that had been conducted by a few renegades.

An incentive to eradicate the Indians like the buffalo was enacted and such acts such as the bounty of 100 silver pesos that had been offered by the Mexican government for any Indian scalp regardless of age or sex was whole hardly accepted by those who wanted to make easy money’. Greed also led to several mistakenly killed Indians some of whom were from one of the friendly" tribes that had signed treaties with the United States. This prompted several war chiefs including the greatly feared Apache War Chief, Geronimo to come out of retirement and to put a stop to the madness. Although wars, killings and carnage continued to exist all around the world, the Southern Mesa’s of Arizona were for the moment quiet, as if sleeping and coiled up under a mantel of boiling hot sand and rocks as if waiting in silence for the carnage of killing to begin again. In the burning hot Arizona mesa’s nothing else seemed to exist except for the present tranquil moment in hell as it existed right at this moment in time.

Today, the sun once again rose in the east and slowly began its endless journey across the cloudless sky as it had for the past several million years. The hot blazing sun had steadily climbed to its zenith and brought with it the passionate heat of the day.

It had not rained for many months and the ground was rock hard, dusty and parched. At this time of the day most all of nature’s creatures both large and small were at siesta. The only thing that seemed alive were the dust devils kicked up by the hot winds that constantly played a never ending games of tag; forever chasing each other across the hard packed red clay of the mesa. The temperatures generated upon the surface of the hard rocks were just reaching its current state of ability to fry eggs. By the afternoon it would get hot enough to cook the whole chicken!

In the blue cloudless sky, a lone eagle ghosted above the red mesas. He was riding on the backs of the cooler desert thermals. The eagle was intently surveying the hellish world below. His eyes were gifted with telescopic sight and from her altitude could see far below even the black and red ants crawling on the ground around a mound of rocks and gravel that they used for a home.

The ants had captured a locust and were in the process of falaying it into smaller pieces. This procedure enabled the ants to take a large object into the small opening of their den. It also insured an easier transference of the locust into the depths of their den. That the locust was still alive and appeared to be screaming in agony did not seem to make an impression upon the ants, even if they could hear. They patiently and busily continued cutting off pieces of the still convulsing body and carried the various body parts into their storage cellars. Once in the cellars the various pieces of locust would be efficiently shipped off to other parts of the den and blended together with other eatable items thereby adding protein to the diet of the colony. These horded stockpiles of nourishments would see the colony safely through the winter months. Nothing would be wasted! Even the bodily fluids from the locust would be used to make yeast which would then be added to harvested grains fermenting the mixture to make beer. During the cold winter months the ants consumed a lot of beer.

The Eagle had eaten earlier this morning and her last eaglet had left the nest weeks ago. He was now seemingly satisfied to just drift aimlessly in and out of the cloudless and intense azure skies. He was not being lazy, for this was nature’s way of keeping both his feathers and his body temperature cool. He was also keeping a vigilant guard both out of curiosity but mostly out of protective love.

The young eagle had been severely injured two years ago while hunting! Being both very inexperienced and very hungry had flown into an obscure cypress tree branch while chasing an old rabbit.

This was probably why the rabbit was old!

The old rabbit was very clever and had eluded other predators like her by using the same trick over and over again! The first time it happened was just a stroke of luck for the rabbit!

The incident occurred was when the rabbit was very young. Out of pure luck and completely accidental A hawk that was in the process of dive bombing the juvenile rabbit while trying to add it to the dinner menu, was badly wounded when it crashed into the branch of an old cypress tree. The Hawk had ended up as dinner for an ever watchful coyote and her six coyote pups. The rabbit had been young at the time but watched and learned as the hunter became dinner for a more ferocious hunter.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend!

Over the years it became a game of bribery with the rabbit. He would keep an eye out for a flying predators and when he spotted a likely victim he would go into his act. He would pretend that he was wounded and did not see the danger. He would even fake a limp or drag himself on the ground as if badly wounded. The rabbit however, always kept the tree branch between him and the flying danger from the sky. Impatience, mainly caused by hunger, would coerce the flying predator to cast caution to the wind and would inevitably end his life by crash diving into the protruding branch. In the blink of an eye and without any warning, dinner would be served up for the coyote. The coyote seemed to understand that the old rabbit was good for a dinner every now and again and left the rabbit alone. The coyote and the rabbit had made an implicit pact by seemly to have reasoned out that it was better to have a dinner served up to the coyote every once in a while than it was to only have only a one course rabbit dinner. And besides if times got very hard, the rabbit was old and could always be caught at any time.

The Eagle remembered the waves of intense pain when he had slammed into the camouflaged branch of the old cypress tree breaking a major wing bone. He remembered seeing the coyote and her two cubs running toward him and then running away yelping as two humans chased them away by pelting the mother coyote and her two pups with rocks.

Through engulfed in searing pain the eagle still remembered the gentle hands and gentle words encouraging him away from the pain and fear that was almost overwhelming him. The gentle words and touches came from the woman and the little boy cub who caught the eagle. They had repaired his damaged wing and had fed him until he was able to fly once again.

The eagle had remained under the guardianship of the two humans for almost a year. The two humans cared for him and fed him even during the time when the cold whiteness covered the ground and food would have been very difficult for a young eagle to catch.

When the heat of the seasons came again and the thermals started to rise high above the mesa and into the sky, the woman and the now much larger boy cub, climbed to the top of the red mesa, carrying the almost fully grown eagle.

The eagle had grown in both width, breadth and stature and was very heavy. So it was with much struggling of the efforts of both of the humans to carry him to the top of the mesa.

When the little party reached the top of the mesa, the woman held the eagle’s face into the blowing wind, until the hot currents had filled up his outstretched wings and revived old memories of the cool azure sky and the fierce wind playing on the eagle’s body.

When the wind had filled his wings for a few